You all know about Champ. We miss him terribly. But I don’t think the humans in the family miss him as much as Lucky, our black lab, does. She’s miserable. And she needs a buddy. We weren’t ready to invest the time (and certainly the emotion) into getting another dog already, but we’re worried about Lucky. So, it’s been tentative. We look, we stop, we grieve a little. We look some more.

Friday, Mr. Nerd decided to stop at a home near where we live. There had been a hand-lettered sign advertising AKC registered German Shepherd puppies. So he figured he’d take a look.

And here, folks, is where the story gets interesting.

Mr. Nerd pulled into the driveway, where he was motioned where to park by a woman at the front door. He approached the house. The woman apparently (ha!) knew what he was there for. She told him to come in. He followed her in. As soon as they got inside the house, she locked and deadbolted the door. At that point, Mr. Nerd just wrote that off as her being alone at home and being cautious. (Yeah. With a strange man. What-EVER.) She proceeded down the hall. Mr. Nerd hesitated, but given that the puppies were new, he assumed they were in a box in a bedroom. Mmm hmmmm.

They entered the bedroom. Mr. Nerd stood in the doorway, looking around for the puppies. PuppyMama turned and sat on the bed.

Y’all almost lost me last night. There was almost an obituary in place of this post. Scratch that. Too morbid.

I got the everlovin’ sh*t scared out of me last night. Scratch that. Too profane.

I almost killed Miss Priss last night. And no, dammit, I’m not scratching this one. I’m not scratching it because some feel-gooder out there thinks I’ve just busted through a Zero Tolerance Zone. It is what it is. She [see paragraph 2] and it almost [see paragraph 1].

See, we live in a beautiful, rural area. We wake every morning to the sound of mourning doves and crowing roosters, not sirens and tires screeching. We live across from a thirty-three acre horse farm, and if we are lucky, when we go get the mail from the mailbox, the occasional horse will stick his head out the fence and say hello. Hell. I planted hummbutt seedballz, for goodness sakes. It’s quiet, it’s natural, it’s beautiful out here.

And I’m totally out of my element.

I have my dogs, all three of them. I’ve killed had more Bettas than I should ever have to account for. I don’t mind the neighbor’s cat, because he makes sure I never see anything coming close to Order Rodentia. I love the horses, the cows, and, while I wonder why on earth anyone needs thirty goats, I don’t actually mind seeing them when I drive to work. I pass at least three or four houses with pigs and/or goats and/or chicks and/or rabbits for sale. (I don’t stop.)

But I don’t get along very well with, um, the undomesticated members of the animal kingdom. In other words, and I hope I’m not being all highbrow when I say this, I don’t wike icky stuff.

For example, there was the time a copperhead made its way to our front porch. I didn’t do too badly that time — I held his neck with a long barbecue fork till Mr. Nerd, well, I may just shriek and fall out with the vapors if I say it, so let’s just say until he “took care of it.” After which I shrieked and fell out with the vapors.

Then there was the time that I was working in my garden when I noticed a tail. Not a snake. Not a rope. A tail. And that tail was affixed to a posterior. The anterior was nowhere to be seen. There was simply this foul, furry rump in the begonias. Whatever it was had burrowed its way all the way down. Well I don’t have to tell you I shrieked and fell out with, yes, the vapors. Then we commenced to trying to scare said thing out of the flower bed. It wouldn’t budge. So then we did a whole bunch of things that the PETA people would, yes, shriek and get the vapors over, finally ending up with pulling the offending thing (wearing proper gloves, of course) out of the dirt by its tail. At the end of the tail (or was it at the beginning) was the most vile, disgusting, offensive excuse for a living thing I had ever seen (with the exception of cockroaches which, of course, make me shriek and, you know). And after doing what any good country girl would do (run to the internet and look up what we had just unearthed), we discovered we had what is aptly titled a Screaming Hairy Armadillo. Think it’s not vile? Google it. And that is its name.

So anyway. You get the picture. I’m a girly girl.

Well, Miss Priss returned yesterday evening from camp. She is attending a fabulous horseback riding camp on 111 acres of lakes and trails. She has had the most incredible experience. And she comes home smelling of horses and hay and good old hard work and sweat. She’s already been invited to become a Junior Wrangler because she has breezed thru instruction so well. So she’s become a regular little country girl, and I’m so happy that she’s enjoying all of nature’s bounty.

But I do NOT like when she brings that bounty home.

Last night, as I was picking up laundry, I noticed a brown something on the bathroom counter. Miss Priss was in the shower, so I asked what that brown something might be, and she told me it was a mussel. Well, my little brain immediately thought mussel shell because no, she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Right?

I walked back into the bathroom about an hour later. The mussel shell had crept open. And crawling out of the shell was a raw, boneless chicken breast. No, y’all it really was. That’s exactly what it looked like. A moving, undulating, raw chicken breast.

I shrieked and fell out with one hell of a case of the vapors.

Miss Priss came running into the bathroom. I was frozen with fear. All I could do was point. The undulating chicken breast was sticking itself to the bathroom counter. And I was, well, you know.

Miss Priss starts screaming for me to get it. Yeah, I’m there, sweetheart. Finally she grabs a towel and picks it up (it was kind of stuck to the counter). Then she stared at me (like I was going to go all caring parent on her and take it from her). I pointed to the front door and almost killed myself getting it open and shoving her out there. She didn’t stop running until she got to the ditch. She tossed it in the water (before it died, PETA, before it died).

First and foremost, those of you who have not had the pleasure of hanging out in your local courthouse need to know a few things:

(1) things are never as glamorous, or as clean, as they appear on tv court shows; (2) courtroom proceedings are rarely, if ever, filled with well-dressed individuals who gasp collectively when the “real killer” is identified; and (3) there is more DNA on the benches in the courtroom than there is in neat little packages sealed with red evidence tape at counsel’s tables. Now that I’ve burst your bubble, let me tell you some of the stuff that goes on around here on a typical day.

First, there was the finger-sucking incident. Witnessed by yours truly. I got on the elevator, which was already filled to capacity with the dregs of society. And yours truly. A nicely dressed woman got on after me. Her fingers were in her mouth. She popped one of them out of her mouth (with that finger-sucking sound that is not nearly as cute as it was when the person was, say, six months old?), and pressed the elevator button. Then, she put her fingers back in her mouth. Then, she realized she hadn’t pressed the button hard enough. So she noisily removed her fingers and pressed the button again. Now I don’t know what is more gross: the fact that she slobbered all over the elevator buttons or the fact that she touched the elevator buttons of a public building with her fingers and then PUT THEM BACK IN HER MOUTH.

Slurp.Then there was the guy who um, had some stomach issues prior to arriving at our office. And while he was waiting to be seen, he had to run back to the bathroom. Except he didn’t make it. At that point, most folks would BOLT to the elevator or stairwell and get the hell home. Not him. He just made little poopy footprints all the way back to our receptionist and politely told her he would have to come back another time.

Yep. Squishy, poopy prints. Discuss.

Finally, yesterday, during a trial, the victim of a robbery was asked to point out the man that had robbed her. You know, they way they do on tv. And generally, you know, the defendant is seated next to his attorney at counsel’s table. So can you imagine the little guy sitting on the back row, waiting for a break in trial so he could approach the judge about a traffic ticket that he had failed to appear on, getting pointed out by the victim? Yeah. The guy in the baseball cap, sitting there, minding his own business, waiting to pay his fine and court costs, suddenly being identified by the victim as the guy who had robbed her? “Um, honey, I’m finished up with court, but I’m not going to be home for, um, five to ninety-nine.”

The real guy was later convicted.

The traffic ticket guy will never go over the speed limit again as long as he lives.

Okay, you really, really LONG-time readers of mine just knew it was coming, didn’t you? You didn’t think I wasn’t going to let this slide, now, did you? Well of course you didn’t. So you guys just sit back and relax while I explain myself to everyone else.

See, here’s the deal. The one thing I cannot stand (well, there are actually a lot, but…) is a hypocrite. If you are gonna walk it, you better go on and talk it, buddy. (Yes, Mr. Ex-Veep, that means you too!!!)

I wrote about

this very subject some sixteen months ago. Because I was furious. And I’m writing about it now.Seems Madonna, that larger-than-life icon of pop culture, has now decided that her own daughter is too good for the very generation that she helped to create. She can’t watch what our kids watch, she can’t dress the way our kids dress, and she won’t date until she’s eighteen.

Listen, folks. I’m all about doing what’s best for your kids. I attempt it myself as often as possible. But to parade herself (literally and figuratively) all over the psyches of young girls and inspire a whole generation of wannabes, then declare it all too trashy for her own daughter?

This post is kinda like E.T. Not that there are extra-terrestrials or a pre-detox Drew in it, but it’s still like E.T. See, I didn’t see E.T. when everyone else in the whole world saw it. For whatever reason, it just took a long time to get around to seeing it. By then, people had talked it up so freakin’ much, and they had gone on and on and on and on about it, that when I saw it, I thought, meh. It just didn’t do anything for me. Because people had gone on and on and on.

This post is like that. Because yesterday’s comments indicate that you guys are waiting for this killer post about setting myself afire. Trouble is, the story isn’t all that interesting. But I promised, and it beats working.

See, it’s

hard to be cool. I try to walk around here with the swagger, walkin’ the talk as well as talkin’ it. Tragically hip. Too cool for Top 40, knowwhatImean? So every once in awhile, I get a little life lesson in how uncool I really am. And that life lesson comes as a result of having attempted to be a grownup and work and everything. When it really, in all honesty, cannot be done.

So there was this candle. Lovely white-tea-and-ginger scent. Given to my daughter from one of her adoptive moms here at work. So Wednesday, when Miss Priss came back to work with me after a doctor’s appointment, she decided to light it. And the atmosphere was lovely. But the time came to leave, and I was picking up around my office to get ready to go.

And I blew out the candle.

But see, here’s where my low coolness ratio really comes in. I blew out the candle. A piece of the wick, still lit, broke away and went straight up.

Up. My. Effin.’ Nose.

Well of course it was still lit. This is ME we are talking about. Hell yeah.

The burning ember (or was it a cinder? Anyone? Anyone?) plants itself right there the hell in my nostril. And it starts melting the inside of my nose. My eyes were watering. I was sputtering. I was hollering to beat the band. Miss Priss was looking at me like, well, like she always does, come to think of it.

But anyway, so there are tears running down my face and smoke, YES SMOKE, coming out of my nose like a bull in a cartoon.

So what do I do? I go running outside my office, hollering, with my finger up my nose. And people — God and everybody — just stared. I realized immediately that it looked, for all intents and purposes, like I was picking my nose and screaming. Oh. And crying. Let me complete that image.